Guest Post: French Imposters, Diplomatic Double Speak, and Buried Archival Treasures

April 10, 2017 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Guest Posts, Recent Scholarship Tags: Archives, Britain, Diplomacy, diplomatic history, documentary editing, documents, Early Republic, France, James Monroe, military history, Navy, newspapers, Politics, Print Culture, scholarly editing, Scotland, War of 1812 Leave a comment

Today’s guest post is by Cassandra Good, Associate Editor of The Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington, and author of Founding Friendships: Friendships Between Women and Men in the Early American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Follow her @CassAGood.

The latest volume of The Papers of James Monroe covers a short but important period in Monroe’s life and career: April 1811 to March 1814. Monroe became Secretary of State in April 1811 and was tasked with trying to repair relations with both Great Britain and France. After war with Britain began in June 1812, his focus broadened to military affairs and included a stint as interim Secretary of War. The bulk of the volume, then, is focused on the War of 1812. However, there are a number of other stories revealed here that will be of interest to a range of historians. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Diplomacy, Slavery, Quids, and Much More in the Latest Volume of the Papers of James Monroe

October 7, 2014 By Michael D. Hattem in Book Review Tags: documentary editing, Founders, James Monroe, scholarly editing 1 Comment

Cassandra Good is the Associate Editor of The Papers of James Monroe. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and her first book Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in January 2015.

From the Louisiana Purchase to reflections on travels in Spain to debates on slavery, the latest volume of The Papers of James Monroe will be a great resource for scholars of the early republic. Whether or not you have ever read anything by or about Monroe, it’s likely that there will be documents of interest in this volume. It spans from 1803, when Monroe was sent to France to help negotiate for Louisiana, to April 1811, just before he became secretary of state. Continue reading →

“Nor Any of the Rights of Citizenship”: Indians, Property, and International Law

January 13, 2014 By Tom Cutterham in Commentary Tags: American Revolution, Citizenship, James Duane, James Monroe, Native Americans, Philip Schuyler 4 Comments

In the years after the American victory at Yorktown, a series of debates took place over questions of citizenship and international law. Who counted as an American citizen, and what did that mean? What did the new American republics, and their confederation, owe to those who fell outside that category? In an earlier post, I discussed these matters in regard to one group of outsiders—suspected loyalists. Here I want to continue the theme as it touches a different group—Native Americans. Continue reading →